Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Just as each card has two sides, so there is (at least) two sides to nearly everything in this film, making it an incredibly deep and rich one. I'm only going to discuss the significance of the "birth canal" or a hero being "reborn" in this post, because it's an important subject in art when it comes up and it's easy to isolate in specific scenes for this post. Some of my favorite examples of the "birth canal," "umbilical cord," or being "reborn" are from a variety of films. For example, another critic (again, this was someone else's brilliant deduction, not my own), saw the 1950 film noir classic Sunset Blvd. and, during the scene when Joe Gillis (William Holden) walks out of the house, he gets the chain of his pocket watch caught on the door knob. The watch was a gift from Norma (Gloria Swanson) and because she has completely paid his way and supported him, Joe has basically lost all purpose to work or go out on his own, even at the moment he's trying to: the watch chain serves to illustrate to us, the viewers, that Joe has become "attached" (the chain getting caught) "materially" (the watch) to Norma and the lifestyle she has provided him (the house/door). Of course, the next time he tries to leave her, she shoots him dead. In a similar vein is Ripley (Matt Damon) in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Ripley gets out of a bus to go see Dickie (Jude Law) and his bag (that looks like a large purse) gets stuck on the door handle as he gets out of the vehicle; we can see Ripley being compared to the mother of Dickie who is handicapped because Ripley himself is so "handicapped" by his low social status, his social awkwardness and lack of professional opportunities (please see Gestures: The Significance Of the Insignificant for more). One of my very favorites is in Star Trek Into Darkness: at the start of the film, Spock has been lowered into a volcano, but the cord breaks, and we can interpret that cord as being the "umbilical cord" to the "mothership"; later, when Kahn (Benedict Cumberbatch) attacks the Star Fleet, Kirk (Chris Pine) throws a hose at Kahn's ship: it's not an effective weapon, however, it is symbolically, with Kirk telling Kahn not to attack the "mother" (the hose being the umbilical cord) that gave birth to him (the Star Fleet; please see The Enemy Of My Enemy: Star Trek Into Darknessfor more).

There's only one problem with Now You See Me and Now You See Me 2: both films are so packed with devices and amazing strategies, they are basically impossible to write about because it's so hard to keep the discussion from becoming too tangled; in other words, you can watch these films over and over and over and over and you won't be able to catch everything. There are, however, three reasons to at least say a few words: first, both films have been pro-capitalist, even though the sequel takes an interesting turn in delivering it; secondly, there is a third film still to come so we should be prepared for that and, finally, the strategy I'm going to talk about is one that pops up from time to time (but it's tricky to catch) so this will be a perfect platform for that discussion: the strategy is birth.

This is an excellent image, as it aptly summarizes just how much goes on in the film at every single moment; just as we are seeing something play out in a scene, so, too, there is so much going on beneath the surface of that scene. It's overwhelming, even for someone like me used to dealing with it all. They really did a fine job on this film.

Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman) was imprisoned by FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) in the first film, basically for the death of his father (he was framed for the theft of money from Arthur Tressler, played by Michael Caine). Thaddeus gets Dylan to let him out of prison to help him track down the 4 Horsemen who have disappeared. When Thaddeus emerges from prison (after being in there for 18 months) he tells Dylan, "It's like giving birth at the hospital: one person goes in, and then two come out." This is an imperative statement because it has repercussions throughout the entire film, even portions which have all ready happened. In other words, the characters are all being "reborn," and this "rebirth" is meant to give new life, not as villains, but as heroes. In Now You See Me, the 4 Horsemen were clearly pro-socialist villains; in Now You See Me 2, they have been given new identities and a new political agenda.

Here we see Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson) returning in his role, but his twin brother Chase also shows up for this film; why? The film is full of "twins." Because they have both occupied the role of the "female Horseman," we can say that Henley (Isla Fischer) and Lula (Lizzy Caplan) are "twins," while Jack has a "dead" twin, his public persona and, of course, his very live self; since both of them "control" everything, Danny Atlas and Arthur Tressler are twins while Thaddeus is his own twin, from being the magic debunker to being one of the leaders of The Eye. because Walter Mabry (Daniel Radcliff) points out that they are both devoted to their fathers and would do anything to avenge the wrong against them, we can say that Walter and Dylan are "twins." Because Walter had been deceiving Danny Atlas (Eisenberg) with the "false" Eye organization, there is a "twin" Eye, the false one forwarded by Walter to get information from Danny, and then the real Eye ran by the owners of the magic shop in Macau. We can also say that Dylan, in his duplicity, IS a set of twins, his FBI agent Rhodes, and Dylan, the leader of the Horsemen. So, what's the big deal? With twins everywhere, there are "mirrors" everywhere, you think you see something once, but you're actually seeing it twice, which creates illusions and a bit of dizziness. Why do this? It's a sophisticated technique meant to deconstruct identity and our understanding about the "stability" of meaning. In other words, who is the real Dylan in the film? Is it the little boy we see at the beginning? Is it the FBI agent talking to someone who he inspired to become an agent? Is it the leader of the Horsemen who leaves Danny to his own corrupt consequences, or the Dylan who saves him when he sees Danny is in over his head? Is the "real" Dylan the Dylan who died in the safe, or the Dylan who emerged from the safe mostly dead? Dylan tells FBI director Austin that he's the same person he's always been, but that's after she discovers he has been working with the Horsemen, not for the FBI. So, is he or isn't he? This is a difficult position, because we can look at this kind of "entanglement" being applied, for example, to transgender people: I'm the same person I've always been, Bruce Jenner might say, but now wants to be recognized as a woman, as Dylan argues he's always been the same person whether he was working for the FBI or for the Horsemen. As the film's agenda advances, however, Dylan's "strong moral compass" kicks in, and rather than be the instruments of a false Eye, they are brought into the true Eye; whereas in Now You See Me, the Eye was more of an Illuminati organization, now it's going to be a watchdog organization fighting for Everyman. We have seen this in, for example, Fast and Furious, when Dom (Vin Diesel) was a petty thief, then he and his team stole $10 million, now they are heroes working with the government; why? They've been baptized, so to speak, and while their sins haven't been forgiven, a more creative way for them to payoff their debts to society has been found with them aiding the government (we can say the same of the character Napoleon Solo [Henry Cavill] in the film Man From UNCLE when the art thief was recruited to become a CIA agent). So, again, why have all these "twins?" Because you and I have the ultimate twins: yourself as you exist physically, and then yourself as you exist digitally; the point of the twins in the film is for your to realize your own twin and how your digital twin is at risk because of advances being made specifically to capture your twin for someone else's profit.

After a year in hiding, the 4 Horsemen (minus Henley, played by Isla Fischer, see note in caption below, please) finally get called by The Eye organization to let them do something: show up at the Octa unveiling ceremony and expose the founder Owen Case (a real Mark Zuckerberg type) as creating the phone to steal all the users' personal information that he could then sell on the black market; it turns out, that Owen Case stole the tech from Mabry who blackmails the Horsemen into stealing the tech back for him,... so that he can do what Owen was going to do. Now, how does Mabry get the Horsemen from the Octa unveiling to Macau where he is?
The birth canal.

"The Self Decapitator,".... like everything in the film, this is a loaded title. She literally "decapitates" herself when she first meets Danny Atlas, but as she says things in the film, she also "decapitates herself" by making herself look like "she's lost her head" and she doesn't have a clue as to what is going on. Lula has three important scenes: the first is when she meets Atlas in his apartment and has things rigged to drop a guillotine on her neck, so she's decapitated herself; why? The head is the governing function of the body, it controls everything else, so this might be Lula's way of saying that she plans on becoming the leader, or "the head" of, the 4 Horsemen. The second scene is when they are at Octa and Lula has to cause a commotion in the kitchen area, she "saws off" her arm with an electric knife (which we saw in Evil Dead). By this point in the film, she probably feels that she's "dead weight" or not needed so she is like a left arm that is lost, she's going to be "cut" from the group. The third scene is when they are performing in London and Lula pops off the head of the dove, then screws it back on when she has to cut her act short. The dove is a sign of the peace that has come to exist between her and the other members of the group, and her popping the head off suggests that she will do something (or fears she will do something) that will disrupt that peace; her putting the head back on the dove means that she's committed to making it work out with the Horsemen and she thinks she can fix anything that might go wrong between her and them.

It's not exactly a birth canal, but that's what it is, really. The Horsemen jump into this tunnel at the top of the roof and out at the other end is,... China. Further along in the film, Dylan is thrown into the prototype of the safe in which his dad died trying to do a Houdini stunt; Dylan picks open the lock, but it's too late and he falls out of the safe without enough oxygen to get him to the top; Danny swims down and gets him, bringing him back up and Dylan survives. Both of these examples demonstrate the "birth canal" and the "being re-born" motif in the film, turning them from their former lives, into new heroes with a new purpose. How are they supposed to be heroes?

One of the themes of the film that I really liked was "inspiration." There is good inspiration and there is bad inspiration. For example, Danny Atlas reveals that it was Lionel Shrike, Dylan's father, who inspired him to become a magician; FBI agent Austin reveals to Dylan that he had inspired her to become an FBI agent. The bad inspiration is revealed by Thaddeus when he tells Dylan how Dylan had plotted revenge against Thaddeus for thirty years because Dylan felt Thaddeus was responsible for his father's death and Arthur Tressler mocks Dylan for hating Arthur's face so much for thirty years (for denying Dylan's mom's insurance claim when her husband died) and yet Arthur could not have cared less about Dylan's face.

Whereas in Now You See Me, the Horsemen had taken Arthur Tressler's wealth and re-distributed it (which is what socialists want to do), in Now You See Me 2, Tressler and his son Mabry are truly villains ready to use the tech to take themselves off grid and sell the information and identities of everyone else who is still on grid (you and me). With Li and Bu Bu being the owners of the oldest magic shop in Macau, and Macau being "the Las Vegas of China," we can say they--"they" being the leaders of The Eye--are definitely capitalists and since Li and Bu Bu organized everything to stop Tressler and Mabry, we can be confident this is a team who is going to keep an eye out for us.
Eat Your Art Out,
The Fine Art Diner

How do we know that Bu Bu and Li are capitalists? Well, Macau is a really happening place, incredibly prosperous, and they have made a living for generations in this magic shop, which is a means of entertainment (magic isn't a necessity in life, like bread and water). Magic is also highly specialized, so people who can do it, like the 4 Horsemen, are able to make a living at it rather than stay in an office all day and do something millions of other people are good at too.

Monday, June 27, 2016

The trailer below we have seen before, but there is an important detail from it I would like for us to discuss, and then we will take a look at the newest trailer released today:

As you probably know, this year is the 50th anniversary of Star Trek (which first appeared on television) and the release of Beyond was timed to coincide with the anniversary. Please notice at 0:17 the back of Kirk's shirt. Normally, a detail like a zipper would be something directors and costume designers would try to hide, however, as Kirk walks down this hallway, we notice the zipper on the back of his shirt; is this just bad directing, or is there a reason for it?

At the end of this trailer, we also see Jaylah (Sofia Boutella) sit in Kirk's seat aboard the Enterprise and the shocked and confused reaction of crew members; why does this happen? Let's ask why there is a "captain's chair" to begin with. Responsibility has to rest somewhere, the buck has to stop somewhere, the fist step in a certain direction has to come from somewhere and that "somewhere" is from the one sitting in the captain's chair. Jaylah probably wants the power that comes from sitting in the captain's chair, but not necessarily the responsibility.

It's an indication of Kirk's free will: he can take that uniform off at any time and go back to the life he left behind or go to a new life he imagines for himself, but Kirk--like all of us--has free will. We know the yellow-ish/mustard-y color of that ugly shirt--which has not changed in 50 years, is the color of unrefined gold, that Kirk is himself a golden soul, constantly being put through the fires of trial so he can be purged and made stronger. At 0:22, we see Kirk and he's looking pretty bad; why? He's "lost face," because his face is battered, Kirk feels like he has to do what needs to be done in order to redeem himself. Here is the last trailer for the film coming out in a couple of weeks:

At 0:13, we catch a brief glimpse of the very young Chris Hemsworth from Star Trek (the first film in this series) as Kirk compares himself to his father. The moment we are shown is important because it's the moment he has just learned he has a son (Kirk had just been born) and he spends the last few minutes of his wife naming their son; why? He knows the importance of a name because it's going to be a part of Kirk's destiny, and Kirk's father wants to insure that Kirk can have the very best possible destiny he can. What Bones fails to see in his description of Kirk trying to live up to his father is, that's part of Kirk's free will: just as his father gave his life for his crew, so Kirk would give (as we have all ready seen him do in the last episode) his life for his crew and ship. Onto another "father figure" film:

The first film Ouija was written and directed by Styles White; the second film, however, was given to two film makers responsible for Oculus, which was a well-done film, but very pro-socialist and in the scam business we see the mother running, we can say this one will be pro-socialist like Oculus. In the original Ouija film, "Mother" was trying to save the children from her daughter Doris because Doris wanted "out" and to use her power again; in this film, we see Doris trying to contact her father; why? If the original film was about Millennials being haunted by the socialism they had called out for, than a pro-socialist version would be Doris being haunted by the "founding fathers" who put America on the path of being a industrial country (the priest in the film might be a stand-in for "father"). The film takes place in 1965, the year Lyndon B Johnson was sworn in as president and the "War On Poverty" began (welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, and other programs meant to increase government dependence). It looks like the film will be good, but I'm confident it will be exactly the opposite of the first. On the other hand, we have a new clip for The Secret Life Of Pets that fully reveals who Snowball the bunny is:

As we have all ready discussed, "Snowball" is an allusion to George Orwell's 1945 political novel Animal Farm wherein animals revolt against a farmer and take over control of the farm for themselves (a metaphor of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution). In The Secret Life Of Pets, we can see Snowball rescuing the "flushed pets," the unwantables, we can see Snowball is meant to be a socialist figure more of the militant kind. There is a part in a trailer we have all ready seen where Max the dog tells Snowball, who is trying to drive a truck, "You drive like an animal!" Why does Max say this? Well, no, probably not to state the obvious, rather, to make another allusion to Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted when the lion says, "Only people and penguins can drive cars!" People can drive cars because we invented them and we understand how they work and what needs to be done; penguins can drive because they work together as a team, each one filling in what needs to be done in order for the end to be achieved; Max telling Snowball that he drives like an animal is a revelation that Snowball doesn't have anything to do with cars and he certainly doesn't know anything about teamwork. And now, someone else who doesn't particularly work well in teams, the first trailer for Jack Reacher 2:

This will definitely go pro-capitalist because only patriots are being set up for charges like "espionage" in today's world. There's a lot going on in this film: the phone ringing, the window of the car breaking, the sheriff being led away in his own handcuffs, all the men wearing the same haircut, etc. So we will discuss this further further down the road. In closing, I think the new version of Ben-Hur, sadly, is going to go pro-socialist. I am heartbroken about this, obviously, but given the group of people who are working on it, it seems there is no chance it will actually be about free will and personal responsibility. You might ask, "Why would they take a classic of Christianity and turn it into a socialist doctrine?" but the truth is, they have everything to gain from doing something like that. For example, if lots of people go to see it, those are people who are going to get the "Gospel according to Karl Marx," and be exposed to socialist indoctrination and perversions of Christianity, so that's a win; if people do not go and see it, Hollywood can say, "See? We made a huge Christian film, no one came to see it, so don 't bother us to make more in the future."
Eat Your Art Out,
The Fine Art Diner

The pro-socialist film opens this week and I will be going to see it; I might go see The Purge Election Year, but I don't want to but I know I need to know what their arguments are,... so we'll see if I go or not. :(

Saturday, June 25, 2016

Whenever--and I do mean this in absolute terms--WHENEVER there is an "alien" in a film, the first question to be asked is, "Who is the alien?" and no, the answer, "The alien is the alien," is not a legitimate answer. There will be clues the film makers want you to unconsciously know to identify who the alien is: it might be a part of our own selves that has become "alien" to us, it could be an "alien" people, such as immigrants, or an idea, or a specific group of people who identify themselves with something the film makers want to disown. There is always a real answer to WHO the aliens are. I didn't get to see the original Independence Day, but I did read the synopsis which stated that they figured out how to kill the aliens by destroying their force field through a virus after they infiltrated the mothership. We could say it was THIS VERY PLAN that was the blueprint for getting Barack Hussein Obama elected in 2008: If the "force field" that protects America is the Constitution (and please remember films such Oz the Great and Powerful, and Thor the Dark World, wherein cities that had never been attacked before had their force fields destroyed and the city was destroyed,too) and the "mothership" is Washington DC (because it controls the rest of the country), then just like Will Smith flying into the mothership, so did Barack Obama to unleash a virus, specifically, the virus of over-extended executive action, immigration amnesty, the afflicted economy for the last seven years, the spread of corruption throughout his administration, the un-Constitutional creation and implementation of Obamacare, using the IRS as his personal weapon, the attempts at confiscating Americans' guns (okay, I won't go on), etc., are the viruses that have weakened and seek to destroy our Constitution.

The original Independence Day, which came out in 1996, was a propaganda piece forewarning the US of what would happen if then-President Bill Clinton didn't win the presidential election that year: that, if the Democratic Party lost to the Republicans in the election, all the socialist reforms that Clinton had undertaken might be swept away; it's not a coincidence that the sequel, Resurgence, also takes place during an election year when power is possibly going to fall from the hands of the Democrats and, once again, all their socialist actions undone. Here is a great "propaganda" piece promoting Independence Day: Resurgence which is filled with "globalism" and the New World Order utopian fantasies:

"Petty differences" which have been "put aside" probably include things like borders, cultural identities, monetary control over their economies, laws, education and language, just to name a few "petty differences" that socialists identify keeping people from the New World Order, which we have been warned about in films like Spectre (which identifies security as a reason people will decide to go with it, and which has obviously happened in Independence Day with the security threat being the aliens). How do we establish this?
By identifying who the "aliens" are.

When the film says "Independence Day," it does not mean the holiday America celebrates every July 4th in honor of the Declaration of Independence and ceasing to be a colony. What this films means is the day when humanity overthrows their employers and instead becomes dependent upon the government. Is that your definition of what "independence" is? If you don't believe me, please study the actions of Jake Morrison (Liam Hemsworth). He doesn't make others take responsibility for their actions. The film makers want you to thin,, "What a great guy for taking the blame for that near disaster," and if this happened in real life, that might be a heroic moment for a person; but then it happens a second time, and what does that mean? The film is tempting people that, in a world as perfect as what has been created with humanity's unity and all the utopian features, it's not complete unless there is someone there to take the blame for you when you have done something you shouldn't have done. Like Hillary and her emails, for example. Socialists know that taking responsibility for your actions makes you a stronger individual, so don't make people responsible, and they will lose their individuality, and they will lose the desire to take responsibility for their actions.

Although no one saw Jupiter Ascending, Independence Day director/writer Roland Emmerich thought it a great idea of having capitalism symbolized by "harvesters" who are going to destroy earth in order to accumulate its resources just as Jupiter Ascending does. Why? Because one of the only "winning" points socialists have left in the battle against capitalism appears to be that liberals still believe capitalism is harder on the world's environment than is socialism: again, these are people who have not studied history and have probably never even heard of devastations like the Chernobyl disaster or the term "ecocide" and how it's the communist governments of China and the Soviet Union who are the greatest perpetrators of crimes against the environment; why?

There is another action the aliens take which aligns them with being conservatives (or, at least, the propaganda liberals have swallowed about what liberals believe conservatives believe): drilling. This isn't the boat in the image, but there is a boat in the Atlantic near the ship where the mothership begins drilling to get to earth's core and harvest the core, thereby making earth uninhabitable. On that ship, the crew are getting ready to "harvest" a sunken ship they have found that has a $100 million dollars worth of gold on it; when the mothership arrives, they know they can't escape, but they also can't get to the gold, so they get drunk; until one of them picks up a radio call asking for any ships in the area to provide monitoring to the government; the captain of the expedition, inebriates, replies, "Tell them we'll do it for $100 million dollars!" and they all laugh and take another drink; the radio operator relays the message and then looks at the captain and says, "They said okay." The crew then scrambles to figure out what the mothership is doing, and by the end of the film, they have made $100 million off the US government for their help. Now, we can say that this group of ocean-gold seekers are like the 2014 Jude Law film Black Sea (also that no one saw) and the film makers of IDR want you to weigh-in on their situation: would you rather risk your life diving in the deep trench to try and get gold you have to work for, or would you rather take a nice bloated check from the inefficient US government for hardly working at all anyway? This is what socialism does.

In capitalism, there are, of course, companies and individuals who break the law and do things they shouldn't; the government is there, however, to enforce the laws and punish the evil-doers. In socialism, the government oversees itself, and because the people have no power in a socialist/communist system, no one can bring the government to justice, or prosecute, when the government has committed the foul deed (if you don't believe me, please recall Tom Cruise's excellent film Oblivion and read more environment commentary here). So, the key to understanding the aliens is this "harvesting" image that will tap into the minds of liberals so they know who to hate.

There are a lot of problems with this film, one of them being the elevation (as in, "celebration") of a lack of originality. In the commemoration ceremony at the start of the film, the main cast makes it clear that they have taken the alien's technology and used it to make huge advances,... they have. Literally, they have taken the technology and, not building on it or innovating on it, they have just duplicated it, meaning, no originality, they are still using the same alien guns, and while they have built systems to protect earth, when the mothership arrives, it takes out the weapons before earth can even get them fired up. In the scene depicted above, it's taken right out of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom Of the Crystal Skull when Indy is in Area 51 and uses bullets to find a highly magnetized container; this scientist doesn't do that, but his searching around Area 51 for his laser is. Why is originality and creativity such a problem for socialists? The government can't allow people who are too smart to exist because they are smart enough to start a revolution and overthrow the government, so anytime someone begins making advances scientifically, they are killed and the body of scientists have to start all over, not to mention, they usually have severely limited access to the outside world so they don't know what they are missing.

At the start of the film, an alien craft appears in front of a moon station the global community has created and even though the craft hasn't done anything, the president, played by Selma Blair, gives the okay to blow up the craft. This reviewer proudly deduced that, since the president fired at the alien craft, Republicans must have won the election that year. It's interesting this misconception, because it's always been the socialists/communists who have been aggressive in terms of the military: not only does George Orwell's anti-socialist novel 1984 (and Orwell himself was a socialist) demonstrate the constant state of war the country must be in for the workers to be united and not rise up in rebellion against Big Brother, but history itself offers countless examples of communist countries who have immediately sought to conquer their neighbors (Vietnam, Korea, the Soviet Union, China). So, if it's socialism that is really the aggressor, why did this reviewer think Blair's president must be a Republican?
Indoctrination.

The "mothership" of the aliens which picks up the distress call from one of the ships on earth, comes to earth and has its own "gravitational field" so it basically picks up all of Hong Kong and then dumps it on London (seen in the image above). Why does that happen? According to liberals, Republicans have their own theory of "gravity" which applies to the economy. This scene from IDR in which Hong Kong has been destroyed, reminds us of another film when Hong Kong was destroyed (for a different reason) in the film Battleship (Taylor Kitsch). Hong Kong is the world's leading financial market because it has the freest market, and the lowest taxation, the very least amount of government control; because Hong Kong had remained a British colony for so long (like the US celebrating independence from Britain on the day supposedly being celebrated in the film) Hong Kong gained a capitalist infrastructure it would not had developed had Hong Kong remained with China (and eventually become communist like the rest of the country). Now, here is the "gravity" theory the liberals apply to Hong Kong: "What goes up, must come down," and because markets do fall, liberals reason that, because Hong Kong is so free and so powerful of a market, when it crashes, it's going to destroy the entire city of London, so, London, it's better to have a "steady state" that doesn't face ups and downs, rather than to have free markets and low taxation because, some day, that's going to destroy you,.... That's how liberals think (for more on this topic, please see In God We Trust, All Others We Track: Battleship).

It would be tempting to call the socialist strategy "genius" except they have managed to so thoroughly keep their party members ignorant and emotional, rather than rational and educated, that it wasn't a chore at all: take the dominant characteristics of socialism, and tell people they actually belong to your opponents. As the video above points out, just as the characters in the film took the weapons used to almost destroy the world to now defending the world, so, too, have the socialists taken the very charges against them and--through perversion--have managed to make their followers believe none of it is true about socialism, but it's all true about capitalism. The reviewer linked above has successfully been indoctrinated into believing that capitalists--who gain nothing from war and aggression--are the war-like and aggressive party whereas it's the socialists who have everything to gain from inflicting war, chaos and damage upon people and countries (please see Itsy, Bitsy, Teenie, Weenie, Yellow, Polka-Dot Bikini and the Vietnam War for more). There is one last punch at conservatives and capitalism the film takes that I want to discuss, and it's in the last seconds of the film: interstellar travel.

The top image is the Queen Alien; they try to destroy her, but she has "her own force field." We can say the Queen symbolizes conservatives and Christians because we have been protected from liberals' attacks by the Constitution, which is our force field. The remaining pilots lose control of their engines, so by using the "controlled dive," they are going to destroy the Queen; in other words, their vehicles are wiped out, and by controlling their descent, they are going to crash into the Queen, and that is going to kill the Queen, because the economic hardships the Democrats have been artificially burdening the country with, have also been a "controlled dive" in the economy (like Hong Kong debris being dropped and used as weapons on London) and liberals have hoped that, with their anti-capitalists and anti-growth measures, they can finally use it against America that capitalism doesn't work and end capitalism in America once and for all. Dillon says during this sequence, "Get ready for a close encounter, bitch," he's calling the motherland America a "bitch," and also referencing Steven Spielberg and his interpreting Close Encounters Of the Third Kind to have been a pro-socialist film that now inspires Dillon, as a young black man, to hate the alien/motherland of America so much and do his duty in destroying it. On an different note, but happening during the same scene, is the bottom image. Whenever there is a school bus (and we have seen them recently in pro-capitalist films, Godzilla, Man Of Steel and Terminator: Genisys, as well as the pro-socialist film We Are What We Are) it means we the viewers are being "schooled" and taught a lesson because the film has become a vehicle of learning for us (it's always a vehicle of learning, but they really want to highlight it when they use a school bus). So, we are the children in this scene, being schooled on how to bring down the motherland. It's interesting to compare Julius' progress throughout the film: we first see him at a retirement center where the very elderly are not interested in his book, How I Saved the World; then he is picked up by some kids who are interested in his book, and then there are even more kids when he takes the school bus because it has gas in it. What does this mean? The senior citizens who don't care about Julius are also those members of the population who are most apt to hold onto capitalism and--remembering how history truly happened--be less likely to support liberalism, so the liberals want to do away with them (the United Nations, which figures in IDR, put out this commercial suggesting that, because the environment isn't capable of handling so many people, old people should voluntarily give up their life because they have all ready "lived a good life," so they can die now because the government needs them to; the commercial has been removed, so that channel was the only one who still had it up). The children, on the other hand, being abandoned and orphaned, are looking for a new "parent" and will gladly be raised by someone else because even though liberals have to have abortion to offer, they need young children to indoctrinate and turn to their side because they don't know anything to counter the liberal teaching.

As we have seen, there are several films (which is typical of any film, and I always try to point out which films are being referenced) IDR draws upon, and one of them appears to be Christopher Nolan's outstanding anti-socialist sci-fi drama, Interstellar. We don't often hear the word "interstellar," so when it's mentioned in the closing seconds of the film, it immediately makes you reference back to, "When have I heard that term before?" Why would IDR want to mention such an anti-socialist film? Interstellar proposed that socialism would destroy the world rather than save it, and only through daring would we be able to use our courage and resources to save ourselves; IDR wants viewers to believe that socialism can save us as well, and that we will even be greater than more advanced alien life forms. So, basically, the entire response IDR has to Interstellar's entire anti-socialist thesis is, "Oh, yea?!?! Whatever you can do we can do better!" (please see Are You My Ghost? Interstellar & the History Textbooks for more).

This might seem like a stretch, and if so, that's fine, but this has really, really been bothering me. Do you remember how, at the DNC convention in 2012, the Democrats voted three times NOT to include God in their platform? This anti-God position seems to be picking up quite a bit of momentum. In IDR, at the start of the film, people from "The War of '96" are still hooked into the collective unconscious of the aliens and have nightmares and hallucinations; many of them around the world have been drawing an image that looks like the image (which is like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the mountain everyone is drawing; I drew, the image above, I couldn't find the image from the film, sorry) on the right. That image is being sent by the Queen Alien to the people of earth so they will be afraid of it and it ends up that it's this sphere of AI sent by the refugees to save humanity from species that are enemies with the aliens attacking earth. As they say in the film, "My enemy's enemy is my ally," or, as they said it better in the pro-capitalist Star Trek: Into Darkness, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Again, IDR is full of references to other films, and when the symbol on the right first flashed across the screen, I immediately though of the film Devil's Due which utilizes a symbol nearly identical to that in IDR (poster is on the left, and the girl in the center of the circle has drawn the symbol on the floor of the nursery). In Devil's Due, the symbol denotes the sin of adultery, creating an abstract image of a penis entering into the vagina; we can say the same for IDR even though there is no sex in the film, because the symbol, like the saying from Star Trek, has clearly been taken from another film. What the sphere wants to do actually mimics the story of The Fall of Satan: he rebelled against God and so Satan and his angels went to their own place (cast out of heaven) and there they plan to destroy God and all those who serve him, which is, again, exactly what the sphere invites the humans to do at the end of the film. It's like Satan is telling the liberals how impressed he is that the liberals have been so successful in defeating Christians and conservatives and he wants liberals to teach the rest of hell how to overcome Christianity. Now, in two different places in the film, it would seem that God has been invoked: first, Julian Levinson (Judd Hirsch) tells one of the kids he is with to "Have a little faith," then, before the Americans attack in the Queen Alien in the trap they have baited, the commander gets on the short wave radio and asks everyone who can hear him to pray for them,... "Because we are all one people." So, that last part was a passive propaganda pieces about no borders, no boundaries, no individual identities, just one big New World Order. So why would the film seemingly have a "satanic messenger" in the sphere while at the same time seemingly promoting God and religion? If you watched the whole clip of the DNC above, you have your answer: just as the delegates voted that they didn't want God included in the platform, and then someone,... (Obama) gave the order from off-stage that God would be included in spite of the negative vote against it, so we can see that even though the Democratic Party has completely divorced itself from God, they still want the cover of being Christian or at least of supporting God, even though they work against God and Christianity at every opportunity (we see this in Obama himself: he claims to be a Christian, but has done nothing to support Christians in the Middle East who are being slaughtered and he and wife Michelle gave Americans a lecture this last Christmas over A Charlie Brown's Christmas special and the "true meaning of Christmas" being the protection of little trees, not the birth of Christ). UPDATE: SATAN AFTER SCHOOL CLUBS TO BE INTRODUCED TO PUBLIC SCHOOLS THIS YEAR: The Movies Didn't Lie: Satan Coming To Schools For Your Children article is here! Remember, Detroit, a Democratic stronghold, put up a public statue celebrating Satan with two children standing beside him. So, the film makers are saying, we will unite with Satan to bring down America (through sex, drugs, moral depravity, ridiculous restrictions on the economy, etc.) and we will finally destroy the Constitution with Satan's help. As ridiculous and incredible as this may sound, please remember the pro-sociaist and controversial ending to The Witch (2015), during which Thomasin preferred to sell her soul to Satan and become a witch rather than live on her own or go back to the settlement from which her family came. If that wasn't a pro-socialist film, I don't know what is, and the film makers' thesis was quite clear. There is also the the very pro-capitalist film Warcraft which revealed those touched by the cursed fel magic (a metaphor of socialism) were being controlled by a Satanic demon. I obviously don't like any of this, however, it's better to understand what the socialists are doing than to blind ourselves to it and be unprepared for the new battles that are sure to present themselves.

In conclusion, Independence Day: Resurgence isn't a particularly good film (even liberal critics are panning how poorly done it is) nor does it offer any real arguments against capitalism or the conservative position that we haven't all ready heard. What it does do, however, is possibly draw liberals to a much closer position that has been hinted at and would certainly not only hurt
Eat Your Art Out,
The Fine Art Diner

This note is an update: I didn't want to put this in the original post until I had some time to think about it, and I have. When President Whitmore is getting ready for his "suicide mission" to kill the Queen Alien, his daughter Patricia tells him, you saved the world once, now it's my turn, and he replies, the first time I saved the world, now I'm saving you. What does he mean when he says this? Unfortunately, that, being a white male, he's blocking Patricia's ability to make more of herself int he world, and like senior citizens offering to "die off" because they have "had a good life," so Whitmore is going to get out of Patricia's way so she can have a future free of successful, old heterosexual white men,... this is exactly what we have just seen in The Conjuring 2, that white men are being held up as the "demonic forces" in society holding back minorities, but there are other forces which stand to gain from the disappearance of white men in society, namely, feminists. In Independence Day, why was it the Randy Quaid character had to die? Because he had fought in Vietnam, he was a veteran who fought against the spread of communism through the world, so that's why his character couldn't go on living. Now, in Resurgence, Whitmore, being a white, heterosexual male, is standing in the way of communism spreading and feminists being able to finally be equal to men, so Whitmore has to die. This is also why Dr. Isaacs has to die (he got hit by alien fire when he was helping to defend the white orb from the aliens getting it): he's a doctor and he's successful. Did you see Cloud Atlas? No, of course not, because no one saw it. Tom Hanks, among many other characters, plays a ruthless doctor, keeping a patient sick intentionally because he wants to make more money off him; in World War Z, when Brad Pitt's character gets to where all the medicine has been stored and he infects himself, there is a doctor zombie trying to get him, but one he's infected, he walks right by him. Both of these pro-socialist films want to destroy doctors because they support socialized medicine (Obamacare) and want doctors in a capitalist system to appear evil and greedy. Independence Day: Resurgence just wants Isaacs dead because (one, he's probably Jewish, and if you look closely at these pro-socialist films, they are still trying to get rid of Jews, although they want Jews to continue supporting them, but once they can, they will do away with them completely) he's white and male and he needs to die so feminists and gays can take his place.

Friday, June 24, 2016

Here is the situation: Durotan, on the left, is an orc chief of the Frostwolves, and their world is dying from a mysterious force (it's quite a bit like the ice that consumes the land in Frozen because of Elsa) that is called fel magic. An orc named Gul'dan (pictured below with the green eyes, fel magic appears as a green glow to those who are being consumed by it) appears and makes himself the leader of a united orc horde (all the orc clans) because he has power with fel magic. He creates a portal through which a war party, including Durotan above, is a part and they invade the planet of Azeroth to overthrow the human population there and make it there new homeland. Even after they have just been there awhile, Durotan (who has not been fighting because there is only unarmed people they are fighting against) realizes the fel is destroying the parts of Azeroth where they have been, and anyone who has been touched by the fel magic dies: that's the equation of it, fel takes life to give life, but the live it gives becomes corrupt and rotten (which is why it's green; more on this in the caption below). Realizing Gul'dan is corrupt and no good is going to come of their invasion, Durotan arranges a meeting with King Llane, the brother-in-law of Lothar, who is pictured above on the right. Lothar is the military commander in chief, and his sister is married to King Llane. Durotan informs them that they are just a war party, but that the entire horde is coming and the fel will destroy the land; he proposes his Frostwolves clan and the humans fight Gul'dan before the gate is complete that will allow the entire horde to cross over; unfortunately, Durotan was betrayed, and Gol'dan attacks Durotan and Lothar during the meeting, making it look like Durotan had lead them into an ambush. Both of these leaders are leaders: the film makes it clear that their qualities are what makes a great leader and without great leaders there is death, destruction and chaos for all. If it weren't for the world of art, America would probably have forgotten what a great leader is: not someone who holds a press conference from the golf course, or the highest elected official sitting in the highest office with his feet up on the desk, or forgetting to salute the members of the Armed Forces protecting him, etc. Good leaders don't lie, the film makes it clear, and Americans have forgotten that, having become so used to it that we had to be shown a film to remind us that leaders should be held to the highest ethical standards, not given a free pass to ignore and disregard them. The paint upon the leaders' faces in the poster above aptly summarizes their motivation: Durotan has red paint because he is motivated by love for his family and clan to find a new home for them; Lothar doesn't need the blue war paint, his piercing blue eyes peer out from his continuously messed up hair so that we always know the state of his soul is that of both suffering and the pursuit of wisdom. There's a deeply interesting part of the film when Lothar is without his war boots. He had to unstrap himself from his boots when he was fighting the fel magic which had taken over Medivh (the guardian, more on him below); Medivh had created a statue that was going to become a golem and, unless Lothar releases his shoes, he will be plunged over the cliff to his death; then, he has to fight bare foot in a hand-to-hand combat duel with the orc who killed his only son. We're given great shots of Lothar's feet, so we know he's bare foot and we're supposed to see that his feet are bare and his has King Llane's sword, not Lothar's sword; why? A golem is an image of slavery and mindlessness (exactly what happens to all who follow Gul'dan and his fel magic, and it's the fel magic which is animating the golem and threatening Lothar) so for Lothar to remove his military boots (the feet and what we wear upon them is a sign of our will and where we want to go in life) Lothar makes the decision, like Durotan, that he doesn't want to be a slave; his boot is caught in the golem, so by unstrapping himself he also frees himself from everything that could potentially make him a slave, which leads us to the fight with Blackhand. Lothar has been knocked out when trying to retrieve King Llane's body, but when he awakens, he is face-to-face with Blackhand the orc who killed his son; Lothar's bare feet shows us that this is his will exposed, to kill Blackhand, but also that Lothar blames ONLY Blackhand--and no other orc--for his son's death. Lothar sliding underneath the huge orc and Lothar using his sword to slice the orc where the orc's genitals are, is a poetic retribution since Lothar's son Callan came from Lothar's loins and is now dead; Lothar has insured that Blackhand's loins are as dead as his own; in stabbing Blackhand in the back, Lothar recognizes that Lothar was betrayed because Medievh intentionally separated father and son so Callan would die and his son's death could be used against Lothar, keeping Lothar from the king's council so Llane would be more easily manipulated.

Most people probably saw the trailer for the film and thought it was going to be a story about immigration, and with the character Durotan (the orc), it was going to be a pro-socialist account of how countries (including in Europe, not just the US) should open their borders and allow themselves to get ransacked by hordes flowing in, rather like the barbarian invasion of ancient Rome; Warcraft proved to be an incredibly insightful political metaphor of what has been happening in the US for the last six years. This post contains spoilers, but I don't know that it really matters if you know what is going to happen before seeing this film: it's not that it has a poorly constructed narrative, just the opposite, and it's not that it's mostly just a visual film (which most critics are offering as reason to see it), it's because you will be able to pick up on more if you all ready know the path the film will take. Far be it from me, however, to tell you how you will enjoy the film, but, there are major spoilers in the post, so you have been warned. This isn't a long post, but we are going to touch upon a few things.

Hello, Obama! If Gul'dan isn't an Obama figure, I don't know who is. He shows up out of nowhere and takes over the clans, forming them into a horde (yes, like the Mongol Hordes which nearly destroyed European civilization during the Middle Ages). We can see a motion to a New World Order in this because the NWO wants to do away with individual countries, like England, and form them into zones, like a European Union. This is what Gul'dan has done with the orc clans. He controls the fel magic, which is a green color (please see it in his eyes) and he uses the fel to promise to deliver the orcs to a new land. Fel magic is green, and like all the other colors, green has both a good and negative value: green means hope because it's the color of new beginnings and abundance, like spring, but it also means something is rotten and corrupt, like mold. Gul'dan uses the fel as a means of hope to entice the orc clans to go and conquer Azeroth, but the truth is, as Durotan realizes, the fel costs more than it produces, just like socialism. When Gul'dan and the war party of orcs first arrive at Azeroth, Durotan's mate Draka gives birth to a stillborn son; the baby is blue when she delivers it, meaning, that in the sadness of the baby being stillborn, they should take up the wisdom of the omen that this expedition is doomed; Gul'dan doesn't allow that, however. Using fel magic, he takes the life from a deer and instills it into the stillborn baby, again, just like socialism, which takes life from something that is perfectly healthy (the deer) and uses that life to try and resuscitate something that has died and isn't healthy (the film The Evil Dead did a fantastic job of providing a graphic illustration of this concept; read by post here). Throughout the film, we see Gul'dan using people to draw their life's breath from them to keep his fel active and "fed," and, again, that's what socialism does: humans lose their humanity, because they are nothing but fuel for the socialist machinery.

When faced with an artistic narrative, one of the best exercises when approaching it is to ask yourself what other narratives it reminds you of, or search for elements you have encountered elsewhere. For example, Gul'dan, pictured above, who brings all the orcs together and uses the fel magic, uses his magic to make one orc the strongest that has ever been so that orc can do Gul'dan's will for him. Have we seen that before?
Yes, a number of films.

This is Medivh, the Guardian, whose sole purpose is to protect Azeroth. When Lothar goes to speak with him about the invasion of orcs and what they should do, Lothar has to walk up a really, really tall and winding staircase to get to Mediveh. Why? Medivh has become "out of touch" with the very realm he should protect and has lost his "grounding" (being too high up in the air). When Lothar finally arrives, he sees two things: first, Medivh has been creating a golem and, secondly, Medivh doesn't have his shirt on. Nudity, in general, means that someone has been "exposed" and their real being revealed; in this case, we see how Medivh is going to be "exposed" for being the one who, instead of guarding the realm, betrayed the realm, and that has certainly been true of nearly every high-raninking elected official in the US government. Why is Medivh working on creating a golem? A golem is a clay creature/man brought to life through some kind of magic (in the original tradition, a Jewish rabi created a clay statue and wrote the name of God on a piece of paper and inserted it into the golem's mouth and gave it life). Why on earth does this matter? Because Medivh creating the golem for (what he thinks) is his own use, actually demonstrates what he himself will become under the evil of the fel magic: a dumb slave with no will of his own, and Gul'dan becomes the same. It's important throughout the film the color of a person's eyes; why? We all know the eyes are the window to a person's soul (because the body houses the soul the way a home--that has windows--houses our bodies), so the blue eyes of both Lothar and Medivh bespeak their suffering and their wisdom; Medivh, however, is being taken over by the fel magic and his eyes turn green until he is consumed and becomes a demon; really, he becomes like Satan himself, it's rather terrifying the demonic form the fel takes. How did this happen? Medivh is the one who invited the Gul'dan and the orcs to invade Azeroth, just has Obama and his administration have invited people from Mexico, South America and the Middle East to invade America (which is also happening throughout Europe). As Lady Taria says, we've had peace for so many years, and now these foreign people are bringing death and destruction with them. Medivh, like so many scholars and the self-righteous, live in a tower removed from the reality of day-to-day events; Medivh wanted to "save everyone," and while it's a noble aim, the means he used to go about it assured it would fail.

In The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug, Sauron makes the Pale Orc his strongest and commander of all his armies; in Thor 2: The Dark World, the Malekith, the Dark Elf, turns one of his elves into a kind of bull-creature to wreck havoc on Asgard. In X-Men: Apocalypse, Apocalypse uses his powers to make his four horsemen stronger while in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of the Shadows, Krang gives Shredder super powers to be able to defeat the turtles. and, of course, in Batman vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice, Lex Luthor resurrects General Zod and gives him all the powers of Doomsday. So,... what? Why should we care about this? This is the difference between a "pattern" and "originality."

This is Khadgar. When he was six years old, his parents gave him to be trained to one day be a guardian, because it would bring them honor; Khadgar took back his vows and left when he could. What does this mean? Khadgar embraces everything he's meant to do in order to help save the kingdom, but ultimately, it had to be his own choice with his free will. Leaving was his recognition of being "enslaved" to what others wanted of him, but still using his abilities, he was able to help save the kingdom and realize what he himself wanted as well.

When one film invokes another film through the incorporation of a recurring motif, they form a link, the second film says it shares a belief, view or idea with the first film and wants the audience to know that; thereby, it forms two links in a chain and a third film also reflecting the same motif joins the chain and makes a third link and so on, so that it's not JUST a recurring pattern, rather, a statement with an expanding vocabulary of agreement and EVEN an indictment against some wrong which has been committed. So, what exactly has happened with all these films repeating the same narrative pattern? Someone has been given unlimited power to destroy an enemy standing in the way of a massive, destructive, world-changing event; who is it?

These two, perhaps more than any other characters, give the film its title Warcraft. The Queen and King of Azeroth know how to make friends. On the left is Lady Taria, the sister to Lothar and Queen to King Llane (right). Her kindness and wisdom breaks down the barriers between her culture and Garona (Paula Patton, pictured below) but what is most interesting about her is the stance she takes in this image (which I don't believe is included in the film). Her hands are held behind her back; why? As queen, she symbolizes "the motherland," the land giving birth to all the people of Azeroth and now, the orc clans coming to live there. Her hands are behind her back as if they have been tied there, and this is rather like the figure of Alodi, also a woman, who has lost her strength to fight Medivh's corruption. King Llane, in his incredible wisdom and perception, convinced Garona of killing him while they were surrounded by orcs in battle because she would become a hero to the orcs and she could use her influence with orcs to procure peace; King Llane's wisdom might have been too advanced for the state of affairs. On a different note, one of the first things we learn in the film about the humans is that Lothar--with his fair skin and blue eyes--is the brother of Taria--who has dark skin, hair and eyes (and, in reality, is from Ethiopia); how can they be brother and sister? Because they the film makers are not speaking biologically, rather, socially and culturally. There is no division between blacks and whites other than the one which are being used to create civil war in the US today. Before Obama came, there was (mostly) peace; there were sad situations, but those were isolated; everyone had upward-mobility. Once race-baiting starting becoming the norm, cities started to burn, like Ferguson and Baltimore, just as there was peace and then cities began burning in Warcraft.

My first guess is the American Press.
The First Amendment wasn't enough; but the power of not being held accountable for lying or not reporting things, that was all the power they needed to serve Obama. This is the whole point of Warcraft: the corruption. Fel magic, as different characters say numerous times, comes from death and creates death where there was life. This is the basis of the riddle which Alodi gives Khadgar: from light comes darkness and from darkness comes light. So, who is Alodi and what does this mean?

"Ganora" in orcish means "cursed," because her mother was an orc and her father a human, so she neither belongs among the humans nor the orcs, having been made a slave to Gul'dan and an interpreter. She is a case of "rags to riches" in that she was captured by Khadgar and won over to the side of Azeroth by the queen and king, and quickly rose from slave to riding beside the king. She didn't want to kill King Llane, but using the dagger Taria gave her, and stabbing it in the neck of Llane, means she hoped Taria would know it was kinder for Ganora to kill Llane than it would have been for him had one of the orcs killed him. On a different note, Medievh gives Ganora a blue flower as his "gift to her." Why? It may actually be a reference to the blue flowers used in The Purge (I know they were used in the first film of the series, but I don't know about the rest of them). IT MIGHT BE that Mediveh is saying, you were a flower that might have been purged by your own people (aborted or killed at birth for being different) but you survived, and you should be thankful and remember that in your encounters with others." Likewise, and we don't have to assume that these two interpretations are mutually exclusive, we can say that Medievh prophesies that there will be sadness in Ganora's life (blue is the color of depression and sadness) but he promises her that she will blossom and grow as a result of it, rather than wither and die under the burden and strains which may face her.

"Light from darkness and darkness from light" means that whenever there is a bright place in the world, let's say the United States, it's going to attract darkness and people who hate it (darkness) will arise from within it; wherever there is darkness, however, there will be strong people like Khadgar, Durotan and Lothar to fight that darkness with the light within them. We can say that this is the entire basis of the film. Alodi, a figure dressed in black, is haunting and spooky because Alodi is dying from weakness and can no longer live; because Alodi tells Khadgar, "Guardian is only a title. We the people are the true guardians," that Alodi is the spirit of freedom, liberty and the Constitution (the laws of a country). Without a doubt, Alodi's urging for Khadgar to use all of his skill to defeat the fel magic is also a plea for us, throughout the whole world, to defeat the same kind of magic that sounds like hope, but is actually a terrible and corrupting force sweeping the world. I can't wait for the next one.
Eat Your Art Out,
The Fine Art Diner

Monday, June 20, 2016

This is a fantastic image. Young Janet stands in a window, and she's about to be "forced" to jump out of the window by a demon; the fall from the window wouldn't kill her, but the tree that has been sharpened into a spear point by a lightening strike below would. The hand we see holding the Rosary is Lorraine's, and in order to save Janet, and her husband who has risked his own life to save Janet, Lorraine has to face that which is haunting her and keeping her from being able to be effective in this case. The window bay, where Janet stands, has three windows to it, a sign of the Trinity, because windows symbolize "reflection" and the interior life, self-examination and illumination. Janet is being forced to "reflect" upon her identity and who she is: when we first meet her, she's with her friend Camilla and Camilla is smoking; she tells Janet to hold her cigarette for her and, sure enough, the teacher comes out and sees Janet with the cigarette and tells Janet mother who believes Janet has been smoking. We can be confident that the moment pictured above in the image relates to this smoking accusation because the glass in the window shatters and goes all over Janet's face, causing multiple abrasions from the broken glass; the glass, symbolic of reflection, hitting Janet's face--the location of our most basic identity with others--is a call for her to "reflect" upon who she is and the choices she makes. About three-fourths of the way through the film, Janet tells her mother that she hadn't smoked, that she was just holding the cigarette because she wanted to look cool in front of Camilla. Janet "fake smoking" with Camilla (holding the cigarette but not smoking) is, sadly, a foreshadowing of the "fake" haunting Janet will be accused of later when she has to intentionally throw dishes and intentionally demonstrate a "faking" of the disturbances so the Warren's and the others will leave. This is an intense scene, mostly because it takes place "in the kitchen" which is also where important scenes took place in The Conjuring, so more on this below.

There is a question which we re-visit from the original film: What did Lorraine Warren see during the exorcism that took place and caused her to lock herself up for eight days? Although it's the same screenwriters and director, somehow, a conversion has taken place: it's not JUST that The Conjuring 2 is pro-capitalist where The Conjuring was (very) pro-socialist; it's that the sequel demonstrates the ultimate argument being used to advance socialism in the world today, and it undermines it completely. There are two parts to this film: the first is what is haunting Janet Hodgson in London, and the second is what is haunting Lorraine Warren (and what she saw in the exorcism), and the two are intertwined beautifully (my analysis of The Conjuring can be found at this link)..

But first,...

Let's go over the geography of a haunted house because it's important in every haunted house film, but imperative in both The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2. Whenever someone goes up the stairs, it symbolizes that they are entering a "higher level" of consciousness, and they expect the audience to follow with them, i.e., to be interpreting what is going on (this is especially true in The Conjuring 2 where there is peeling paint and frayed fabric everywhere: the surface has been "stripped away" and we are supposed to peer at what is underneath, and, in this case, that means what the film is trying to say to us [we have to "cross" the threads of the tape just as Ed does so we can get the whole message; the "tapes" we have to cross is that which happens to Janet and that which happens to Lorraine; or, we could say, that which happens in the film, and that which happens in reality outside of the film]). The basement is always going to be that which we haven't dealt with in our own lives, the things we have tried to "bury" and don't want to remember or examine, so we keep all those things "in the dark." The main level of a house is the main narrative, the elements of a story we would expect to see unfolding in a particular way and will have the feeling of "normalcy" to them but which are really just the manner of "passing through" between the upper-level and basement.

Now, Janet.

As we know, water symbolizes the three stages of self-awareness: water is its liquid form is the first stage of awareness about an issue or the self; water that is in vapor form, fog or clouds, means that one is trying to look deeper, but things are not becoming visible and manifesting, they are hiding and it's difficult to discern what the issues are. When water is solidified, like ice or snow, it's because the thoughts have been finalized and are now tangible. In the image above, it's not only important that Ed stands in water, but that it's in the basement, and it's not just that, but that he's also holding a flashlight and someone is creeping up behind him (presumably Bill Watkins being controlled by Valak, judging from the dentures). So, the basement indicates something that has been hidden, something repressed or put away that someone doesn't want to deal with; in this case, since it's Peggy's basement, Ed has entered into her psychological zone of what she doesn't want to deal with and has repressed. The washing machine has broken and there is a leak, a valve needs to be turned off because it's flooding the basement. We can say, then, that what this scene means is that Peggy has repressed the loss of her ex-husband and it has nearly destroyed her (the flood in the basement); Ed helping her to fix things around the house is a reminder of what it was like to have a man in the house again. Ed finding the leak in the basement means that he's going to be able to stop Peggy's rush of negativity towards men because the of the crummy thing her ex-husband did to her and their family, so Ed can "stop the flood" that's ruining Peggy's psyche (and yes, if you are thinking of Noah's Flood, and the wiping away of the old world so a new world can start again, that's right on). The flashlight means that Ed can illuminate what the problem is, he can see how defenseless Peggy is and the burdens she has and help ease those so she's not as stressed. Just as Ed is making progress, however, Bill Watkins shows up in the corner and starts lurking towards Ed as if to attack him; why? Because Ed is being a nice guy. Ed is being what every man should be, like Peggy's neighbor Vic who helps Peggy and the kids and lets them stay with them, what a great guy! And socialism doesn't like that. So Valak is going to use Bill Watkins to attack Ed BUT, since Peggy stood up for Ed and warned Ed that he was going to be attacked, Peggy gets to be attacked, literally, instead. Rather than try and drown Ed, Bill--being used by Valak--bites Peggy on the arm and plops his dentures into the water to prove he was there. This isn't all that has happened in this scene, but we'll finish it below under the caption where we see Bill seeing in his leather chair. But, in doing these things for Peggy and the kids, Ed not only helps them and restores their faith in men, but also is helping men by being the type of man that men need to be and, ultimately, want to be, because men need to be needed, just like women. That's the last thing a socialist wants someone saying.

Janet's story begins with a "spirit board." Why? The Conjuring 2 wants to invoke the film Ouija, and the same lesson we learned in that film: not just the rules of a spirit board, like never play in a graveyard, never play by yourself and always end the game and say good-bye (all three rules being broken by Janet [since Bill died in the house, we could say the house is a graveyard since there didn't seem to be any activity before Janet's bringing of the spirit board into the house; at the very end of the post is an image of Peggy holding Janet's "spirit board"]). Why are these young people (in both The Conjuring 2 and Ouija) playing with Ouija boards? They thought they were going to get answers to their questions, instead they got death and destruction, and this mirrors what has happened politically in the US with the Millennials supposedly electing Obama and supporting socialist Bernie Sanders: in other words, Millennials have no idea from whom they are asking for help (we saw a similar example in The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian, explored in the caption below). So, it is, supposedly Bill Watkins who "answers" and is accountable for the haunting and terrorizing of Janet and her family. So, who is Bill Watkins?

Janet meets Lorraine for the first time and Lorraine tries to win Janet's trust. What's so ironic is, Janet is so hesitant to trust Lorraine, but was consulting "someone" with her spirit board (which is pictured at the very end of this post); in other words, here is a real human Janet can trust, but she was turning to an un-seeable and un-knowable presence when she was playing with the spirit board to ask about whether her dad was coming home. We can say that the makers of The Conjuring 2 are clearly "channeling" the film Ouija as well in this. In the film The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian, the Narnians are facing extinction by human rulers and Prince Caspian, who has lost faith that Aslan will come and help them, enters a spell to summon the White Witch (Tilda Swinton); Peter, furious with Caspian, knocks Caspian out of the spell's circle but is then there himself and is himself entranced into nearly giving the White Witch the power she needs to re-enter Narnia; it's only Edmond, who learned the White Witches evil tricks so well, who recognizes what is going on and stops the proceedings before she can fool Peter. The point is, the film Ouija is very much set up like Prince Caspian, and The Conjuring 2 follows this line of thought in that those who have lost faith are attempting to summon powerful forces they don't understand to come and save them, rather than save themselves. There is another terribly important element which The Conjuring 2 utilizes from Ouija: a newspaper headline. In Ouija, one of the characters discovers that Doris had gone missing/died (or something like that) from a newspaper article; on the same page as that story is the headline about troops coming home from the Korean War; why? Because the film makers wanted to relate in the minds of the viewers that "mother" in Ouija was the same as the "motherland" America who had been off fighting the communists in Korea (please see Mother's Coming: Ouija (film) and What's Haunting the Millennial Generation for more). In The Conjuring 2, we see a newspaper headline about the English "Amityville" and Enfield poltergeist, but if you look around on that page, you will also see notices about the breadlines in England at this time. In other words, the government was having to help feed people (with breadlines) because they couldn't feed themselves and the bread was running out. This socialist program in England was matched by the United States in the same year with the launching of food stamps, which has only risen in use, especially since 2008. In the scene pictured above, Janet tells Lorraine that she feels "it" is using her, and it has told Janet that it wants to hurt Lorraine. Why does this happen? Because the young people, like Janet, are being used, and they are being used to hurt the older generations. This isn't just in the US right now but all over the world. Besides a class war about income, besides an ethnicity war about skin color, besides a gender war against white males, there is also a culture war between youth and their elders being waged, and so even though two "minorities" like Janet and Lorraine who are both females, should be on the same side, they are going to be turned against each other politically speaking so that everyone is at fault and no one can find an ally with whom to rally against the main force controlling all the war being spread. This is a very important point for us to consider: the Enfield Poltergeist, upon which the film is based, is considered nowadays to have generally been faked by Janet and her older sister Margaret. TheConjuring 2 brings up the possibility of faking, but it's also clear there is a demon at work and the film makers believe the events in real life to be the foundation of a successful narrative acting as a metaphor to describe today's political events.

Bill Watkins is exactly the evil villain socialists want him to be, and very much why I thought the film would be pro-socialist. He died, and he still wants his old, dilapidated house for himself, being "so cruel-hearted" that, even though he's dead and no longer needs a home, he still wants this abandoned mother and her four children out of "his" house. Then there's the television. Janet stays home sick one day with a fever, and the TV begins changing channels; why? It's the old, rich white men in the world who are controlling what we watch (what gets made for TV and what doesn't, which shows get cancelled and which shows renewed). Then, there is the issue with Janet's father, who abandoned them because he had twins with the woman around the corner. What a total jerk. But this is nothing compared to how the film opens with the Amityville sequence.

First of all, please note how ugly, angry and hostile Bill looks as he comes out of the darkness to attack Janet. IF the film were going to be pro-socialist, this is exactly the image of Bill Watkins we would see throughout the movie, not the image of him in his bathrobe being held captive by Valak. Why does Bill attack Janet in her bedroom? Because that is "her" house, the area of the house that belongs to her, the way the blanket fort in the hallway is Billy's and belongs to him, so for him to tell them to get out of his house, he (under the control of Valak) is showing them what it's like to have someone in your home that you don't want that. Now, why are the crosses upside-down? They are crosses, but they are not a Crucifix which has the body of Christ upon it. A cross, while symbolic of Christianity, is only that: a symbol, it has no power in and of itself. A Crucifix, however, derives power from two sources: first, the priest who blessed it, and that blessing carries with it the power of the Holy Spirit to spite demons and other unclean spirits, and secondly, the very image of the Sacrifice, the very image of Love to which all demonic forces are opposed. There are at least two reasons why the differences between a cross and a Crucifix is important in the film: first of all, anything or anyone can take up a cross and call what they are doing a "holy" or "Christian" activity, even though it's not (remember that Valak wears a cross around his neck when he appears as a nun, so the cross has no power over him, but he uses it to present himself to Lorraine as something that is holy and a message from God). This is the situation with socialism: it dresses itself up in artificial costumes of Christ's teaching--like taking care of the poor, not owning too many possessions--but twists it to its own end and not that of God's, and this is how many people fall for socialism. So it's important that we know there is a difference and the film knows there is a difference. The second reason it's important is because who has the Crucifix we see in the film? Ed. Jesus upon the Cross, the Crucifix, is the ultimate example of what all men are and should do, and that's why Ed is such a good man, he is protected by the Crucifix and the sacrifice of Jesus guides him on what Ed himself should do in all of his decisions and how to act in love for others. Valak can't stand this. Valak wants men who act like Peggy's ex-husband, and the pawn Bill Watkins (not when Bill talks to Lorraine). Men like Ed cannot be controlled by Valak, or socialism, and they undermine socialism's entire argument that white men are bad and evil and greedy and need to be put away because no one else can have anything as long as there are white men around. So, in the scene depicted above, when each of the crosses are being turned upside-down, that's not such a big deal because Valak demonstrates--not that he's more powerful than God in turning Jesus' Sacrifice around and perverting it--but that the crosses have no power over him and anyone using the scene of Bill attacking Janet during this scene is taking the cross and turning it upside-down towards their own advantage as well.

The film begins with the family murder in the house at Amityville, and who is it that kills his family? A white male, with a shotgun. This man goes through, cocking his gun, and kills each member of his family while they are sleeping. So, not only are we seeing the terrible deeds of a white man, but the horror of the 2nd Amendment which allows American citizens to have guns!!! If you know me, I was ready to walk out of the film before even five minutes of it had started,... so why didn't I? As Lorraine witnesses the murders of the family, she's not just witnessing them, she's participating in them, in that, it's Lorraine Warren we see cocking the gun and going into each bedroom and then pulling the trigger; as she backs out of the room, we see the reflection in the mirror and it's not Lorraine's reflection, rather, it's the reflection of the grown white man who killed his family, but it's like he's possessing her to show her what happened. This is the thing about horror films: they are always psychological,first and foremost, exploring those gaps within us between the heart, mind and soul. Often, they are sexual as well, but they are always psychological, which is what makes them interesting. SO, why on earth do we see Lorraine walking through these murders "with" Ronald DeFeo Jr. who committed the murders?
To set us up for the next scene.

This is probably the most important image of the film, and it takes place at the very start (unfortunately, my analysis is going to be rather convoluted and I apologize for that). Again, we have just seen Lorraine walking through the house, re-enacting the Amityville murders as if she herself were the killer; when she passes a mirror, we don't seen Lorraine's reflection, we see the reflection of the man Ronald DeFeo Jr who committed the murders. Now, under normal circumstances, we wouldn't necessarily interpret what is about to happen as being Lorraine's psyche, her "basement" of the soul because this isn't her house; however, she is doing what she does best, helping people with their haunted houses, and we know that Lorraine isn't actually walking around the house, she's sitting beside Ed at the table the whole time, all the events she sees she is seeing interiorly, so the basement of the house is within Lorraine. So, when we are in the basement of the house, and Lorraine has uncovered this mirror, this is a big moment. As we know, basements symbolize something we have buried, our disappointments, our taboo appetites, our frustrations and fears, parts of our lives we don't want to deal with,... etc. All ready then, in being "in the basement," Lorraine is in a vulnerable position (remember, it's in the basement that the demon Bathsheba was first uncovered in The Conjuring). Uncovering a mirror suggests that she's uncovering a part of herself (she's going to "reflect" on a part of herself she didn't know was there or she herself covered up). She looks in the mirror and sees the nun behind her, looks back, and doesn't see it standing there; she looks in the mirror again, and sees it standing behind her, closer, but again, when she turns around, it's still not there, until she looks back at the mirror and then it's right in front of her (pictured below). I will go into "the nun's" costume in greater detail below, but please note that Lorraine and the nun both wear white and black, they both have their necks covered, large objects hanging around their necks, their hair pulled back. AT THIS POINT, that nun we see is supposed to be a metaphor of Lorraine's "basement" skeleton: what she did, what she didn't do, what she should do but won't. Because the nun was initially standing behind Lorraine, that suggests that what the nun symbolizes was something in her past; the nun moving up to be face-to-face with Lorraine means that her "past has caught up with her" and she's going to have to answer for what she's done or what she didn't do. The reason this is such a dangerous situation for Lorraine (and it will be explored further below) is the devil and his demons can appear as "angels of light" and lead us astray. They can take something that one would think is holy--for example, spending time in prayer--and bend it to perverse levels until a person is exhausted praying but they become fearful if they stop praying (this is an example of scrupulosity). Because we next see a vision of Ed dying, we can interpret the nun being behind Lorraine, and Ed's death, as a "chastisement" supposedly from God (but really from Valak) for Lorraine not becoming a nun and marrying Ed instead. The reason this "trial" is happening at the Amityville house is that Valak wants to get Lorraine to believe that, had Lorraine become a nun instead of marrying Ed, her sacrifice and prayers could have stopped the massacre from taking place. More analysis on this below.

Lorraine is led into the basement by a demonic looking child and searches in the basement until she uncovers a mirror; while looking in the mirror, she sees a demon dressed as a nun standing behind her (pictured above). Initially, since the first film did not lead me to believe that Lorraine and Ed Warren were practicing Catholics--rather, that they were Protestants--I assumed the film makers (still walking down the pro-socialist path) would use the nun as a symbol of the Church and the ally it with evil; that's not what happens. Lorraine "uncovering" the mirror is Lorraine uncovering a part of her own soul, and what she sees in the mirror is the same as what she saw during the exorcism in The Conjuring that caused her to lock herself up for 8 days (I know, if you have seen the film, you're saying, no, that's not right, but bear with me, I can prove this). Just as The Conjuring 2 jumps back and forth between the US and England, so we now need to jump back to Bill Watkins before we can understand what is happening to Lorraine Warren.

This is Bill Watkins. An old man, on oxygen, in his pajamas and bathrobe; not the stuff of horror films, is he? Socialists, however, want you to believe this--and all men like him, including Ed Warren and the neighbor, Vic, and researcher Maurice--are the stuff of horror films and they have to be overthrown because of all the evil they sow in the world. (Please consider the film The Purge with Ethan Hawke: his character has to die in the film because he symbolizes everything white men have symbolized to "minorities" since the 1960s, and--throughout the film--Hawke's character is conscious of "being a man" and doing the "manly thing," rather than dying like a coward and not defending his family; these are qualities socialists abhor and want to demonize, and they do it to the hilt in The Purge [please see The New Founding Fathers: The Purge for more]).Those socialists are that black "hand" that looks like an insect body-segment on Bill's shoulder in the image above, because they are using men like Bill for their agenda. And that's the point, he's only been a pawn this whole time, just as white men in general have been the pawns of socialists trying to start riots and wars against them, what they have accomplished and what they have and have built. (Please consider the film Independence Day: Resurgence when President Whitmore [Bill Pullman] goes on the suicide mission to kill the Queen Alien; he tells his daughter Patricia that he is doing it to save her, and socialists are happy about this because they believe white men like Whitmore block and hinder feminists ability to get ahead and achieve--that is the foundation of the entire myth of feminism--and why Whitmore has to die, he's a white, successful, heterosexual male and therefore he's a dominant power-figure in American society who oppresses everyone else; this is exactly what was done by the Nazis to Jews in Germany leading up to and during World War II). When Janet has been taped "faking" a paranormal attack, she tells her sister that, "He told me he'd kill you if I didn't." This was actually Bill helping Janet, because he's warning her that Valak WILL HAVE HIM KILL THEM if Bill can't communicate to Ed and Lorraine what is happening so they know how to fight Valak. Valak doesn't want Ed and Lorraine to leave, necessarily, because he knows that he has greater control over Lorraine while she's on his turf than when Valak is on her turf (Valak can only appear to her and disturb her if God allows it, and God is allowing it in the Hodgson house as well, Valak can't do anything outside of God's will, but Valak would never admit that and doesn't understand it).

Later in the film, and after being shown a video tape of Janet Hodgson "faking" a paranormal attack, the Warrens leave; boarding the train, Ed has a moment of Grace: the tape recordings of Janet speaking fall out and form a X on the floor and Ed "sees" that just as Lorraine sees spirits, so Ed crosses the tapes and from the tapes hears Bill Watkins saying he wants to leave but someone is keeping him in the house; then, a miracle happens, and Lorraine is able to communicate with Watkins (please see caption above for more) and she learns that he is being controlled by another demon. This is the demon who has terrorized Lorraine since Amityville. So, who is this demon?
Lorraine Warren.

Ed, of course, doesn't realize he's painting a demented portrait of his wife. What does it mean that Valak also appeared to Ed as the nun? That Ed has also had feelings--at least, at some point, and now they are being "resurrected" and used against both of them--that Lorraine should have become a nun. If Ed had NOT had this suspicion at some point, then the vision he had in his dream would have dissipated upon waking and he wouldn't have thought of it anymore; Ed sitting down to paint the vision he had, however, shows that it has disturbed him and he needs to understand it, the way Lorraine needs to "name" the demon haunting her. THIS IS AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN THE FILM because Valak has a victory; not in getting Ed to paint his picture, rather, because we see the letters of his name in the table area where Lorraine and Ed sit down to talk about not doing their paranormal research anymore, which is exactly what Valak wants; why? Because he then has greater control and can get more people to commit sins (murder, suicide) and have greater power. If Ed and Lorraine stand up to him, he's defeated. So Lorraine saying they aren't going to do their research anymore proves that Valak's strategy has worked. What strategy was that? If Lorraine is feeling sufficiently guilty about having married Ed instead of becoming a nun, she will be paranoid that Ed is going to die as a punishment for her sin of not becoming a nun. In this scene, Lorraine reminds Ed of what she saw in a vision during an exorcism they aided in and reveals she saw a vision of Ed's death. She locked herself up for 8 days and wouldn't tell Ed what had happened, because the devil showed Lorraine her sin of marrying Ed in the vision. When we feel really guilty about something, even if we didn't do anything wrong, the devil will use it against us so he can control us, and that is exactly what has happened (this is why it's so important to "discern" the spirit that leads us to doing something or not doing something; if the devil can use something against us, he will. Lorraine feels guilty about marrying Ed (that maybe that's not really what God wanted her to do after all) and doesn't want Ed to be taken away from her. The truth is, God wanted Lorraine to marry Ed, they are much stronger together, and that is why God allows Valak to haunt and bully Lorraine, so Lorraine can overcome her fears and sense of guilt about whether or not she should have become a nun. By the end of the film, Lorraine knows she made the right decision and she's victorious and the devil is, once again, defeated.

Well, at least, the demon Valak wants Lorraine to believe it's her own self, that she is seeing an image of her own soul. When Valak appears within Lorraine's home, and her daughter Julie has seen him, and Lorraine follows Valak into the office where Ed's picture of Valak hangs, there is a moment when the shadow of Valak travels on the wall across the room to the portrait Ed painted; then Valak's hands grip around the painting and Valak charges at Lorraine from behind the painting. This is absolutely the most intimate detail we could possibly be given about the state of Lorraine Warren's soul, and why she is being terrorized, and why she has been "weakened" in the film: she had a "shadow of a doubt" about her vocation in life. At some point, Lorraine discerned becoming a nun; after she met Ed and they decided to get married, she didn't think about becoming a nun anymore. This is the thing about demons and the devil: they will use anything to turn it against you and away from God, case in point,...

We can also see Ed going through this same spiritual dilemma as Lorraine: the shadow of The Crooked Man that fights with Ed (top of this image). Just as the shadow of Valak-as-the-nun will indicate that Lorraine had a "shadow of a doubt" about becoming a nun instead of marrying Ed (in the bottom image), so Ed, too, had a "shadow of a doubt" about Lorraine becoming a nun when we see the shadow of The Crooked Man across the walls; in essence, Valak as The Crooked Man accuses Ed of keeping Lorraine for himself when Ed should have grown old and crooked, like Bill or the character in the rhyme, The Crooked Man, instead of Ed growing old with Lorraine at his side. The point about demonic temptations and spiritual battles is, they don't have to make sense, they don't have to be reasonable; there just has to be some doubt or guilt the devil can exploit and a person's willingness to believe it even for one second, and their faith in God has been undermined. How does Ed overcome the "shadow of doubt" lingering over him and Lorraine? Elvis. I Can't Help Falling In Love (With You) is his prayer-like chant to overcome their doubts that Ed could not have NOT loved Lorraine; he had to fall in love with her, it wasn't because of sex or being afraid of growing old alone, it was because he loved her and therefore needed her. Ed sings the Elvis song for the family but is that a really good choice for Peggy since her husband had just left her? Ed knows, however, that if he and Lorraine are strong together, the two of them will be strong for the family, so that's why he sings it, and it is then played again at the end of the film, because it's an affirmation of the strength that comes from both love and partnership.

In the image above, when Lorraine sees Ed painting the demon she had seen at Amityville, they go sit down at their kitchen table. I read the synopsis before going to see the film, so I knew the demon's name was Valak. As Lorraine discusses with Ed not doing anymore work, the name VALAK is seen across from her, like a card their daughter might have made; later, when Lorraine reads her Bible and Julie sees Valak, on the bookshelf to Lorraine's left, the letters VALAK are spread on the shelves. Why? The film makers want us to know that Valak is the one acting unseen on the events taking place. For example, when Lorraine sees Ed painting Valak's picture, Valak is the one leading Lorraine to not want to do exorcisms and help families anymore; this is not the will of God. How can Valak exercise power over Lorraine like this? Again, because of her doubt about her vocation, but also because of what she saw during the exorcism which caused her to lock herself up for 8 days. What did Lorraine Warren see during the exorcism?

Her sin.

The poster in this image is a perfect illustration of Valak using Lorraine's religion to "choke her" and keep her from doing what she's supposed to: using her God-given gifts to help others AND be a good wife to Ed. The beads of the rosary are crossed on Lorraine's hands, just like the tapes Ed recorded Janet on, so by using what we know of Ed and Lorraine, we can cross the prayers and know that, indeed, they are meant to be together because they are stronger as a team than as individuals. Why does The Conjuring 2 want to take time to make this point? To re-establish the importance of marriage. Less than 50% of couples living together in the US today are married, and socialists want that number to rise even higher. In spite of the troubles Ed and Lorraine have faced together, they have stuck it out and in spite of Lorraine's fears about Ed's death and losing him, her faith in God perseveres. These are the lessons we are supposed to learn from the film. As Ed tells Peggy after learning about her husband's infidelity, demons like to feed on negative energy and get us when we are all ready down; a film like The Conjuring 2 is meant to lift us--and the institution of marriage--up.

I know Lorraine says she saw Ed die during the exorcism, and then Valak shows her an image of Ed dying upon the tree that will later show up outside the Hodgson's home towards the end of the film, however, it's because Lorraine has a hidden sense of guilt that she feels it's possible that God will punish her by taking Ed away from her via death so she will be in the state she was in before she met Ed. These are emotions, not logical thoughts or reasoned scenarios, and that's where the devil's power comes from, muddying the water of our emotions. If Lorraine didn't have the slightest possibility that she had sinned in marrying Ed, rather than becoming a nun, then Valak wouldn't be able to control her for as much of the film as he does (like getting her to make Ed agree that they don't do exorcisms anymore, which is exactly what the devil wants). So, is God mad at Lorraine and punishing her by giving Valak this power over her?
No, just the opposite.

In the poster above, we see Lorraine's hand--not Valak's hand--choking her, and that's because Valak uses Lorraine's doubt against her. In this image, this is the moment when Lorraine is in the basement at Amityville and has turned back around and sees Valak standing in front of her in front of the mirror, in other words, Lorraine Warren is "Face to face with her sin." How can we tell that this is an "unholy nun" and not a message from God, that God is, in fact, trying to communicate to Lorraine that He doesn't want her to investigate demonic hauntings and leave Ed to become a nun? All colors have a positive and negative value, so white, (like Lorraine's coat) is positive when it denotes faith, hope, charity and purity. When a person is dead in those virtues, that is the negative color of white, because a corpse turns white as it decays, like the face of Valak who is dead in all of those virtues (and all virtues in general). Black always means death, but "good death" is when you are dead to things of the world but alive to the world of faith, like Lorraine's turtleneck; "bad death" is when you are dead to the things of heaven but alive to the temptations and pleasures of the world, like Valak's head covering. Valak wears the Carmelite (?) habit which is brown, and brown for the monks and sisters of Mt. Carmel signifies their humility, because brown is the color of dirt, so they hold themselves in a lowly position and place God and others before them in all things. But because brown is the color of dirt, it can also refer to someone literally/spiritually being "dirty," in this case, Valak accuses Lorraine of being slutty, that she should have remained a virgin rather than marry and have a child. We can test this analysis against when Lorraine reads her Bible (and again, the letters spelling VALAK are on the book shelf to her side) and Lorraine believes her daughter Julie sees Valak as a nun at the end of the hallway. We see Julie a minute later, playing with her beads like nothing had happened, indicating that Julie had actually not been a part of Lorraine's trance, but Lorraine imagines Julie seeing Valak because having Julie is part of Valak's condemnation of Lorraine. And, once more, Valak wears a cross around his neck, but it's only wood, it hasn't been blessed and has no religious property. We know that holy beings have appeared to Lorraine because she tells Janet about seeing an angel at the hospital touching the boy's cheek, so if God wanted to communicate with Lorraine about her "sin," He would have found appropriate means to do so.

When Valak enters Lorraine's house, and Lorraine enters a trance and imagines that Julie sees Valak standing in the hallway (as Valak turns to go into (what I am going to call) Ed's office where he put the painting he made of Valak, when Valak turns, there is a picture of a white dove on the wall behind him (see image below, even though he's standing in front of the painting in this one). Although we just saw the letters of Valak's name spread out on the book shelves where Lorraine was reading her Bible, now we see an image of the Holy Spirit as a dove, meaning, God is allowing Valak to torment Lorraine and test her. Why?
For at least two reasons.

The hallway symbol is a symbol of a journey, not where she is now, but where Valak wants her to go. Again, when Valak moves to his right to enter the office where the painting of him is, we see a picture of a white dove, which is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, meaning that Valak is acting, but only because God allows it. We can look at the hallway as a "birth canal," notice how long and narrow it is, because God intends for Lorraine to be "reborn" from any and all doubts within her about her having married Ed.

First, it will make Lorraine stronger by making her more pure. She won't have this weed of sin (regret or doubt about not becoming a nun) to weaken her faith, and, therefore, her strength in these trials and battles. Secondly, we cannot give what we ourselves have not received, so Lorraine cannot give exorcism to Janet until Lorraine herself has been exorcised. That God is the one in control is evident when Lorraine demands that Valak give her his name so she can have power over him: why on earth--or in heaven, for that matter, or even hell--would a demon give a Christian their name if the knowledge of that name is going to make the demon weaker in that battle and assure the Christian of victory?

The Clash had just released their first album in the summer of 1977, one of the songs being Remote Control and it's a remote control that plays a key role in a little, but pivotal scene of the film towards understanding the "real" Bill and his relationship with Janet. Janet has a fever and has to stay home sick; she's watching TV, some comedy show with men acting like ten-year-olds and dressing like women (no, it's not Monty Python, I would have recognized them). Suddenly, the TV begins changing channels on its own: there are images of Queen Elizabeth II, and then images of Margaret Thatcher giving a speech; then the TV stays on a children's choir singing Christmas carols before going to a channel with just noise. We know that "noise" artistically employed means that there is a message hidden in what has happened, but we have to decipher it through everything, so let's take up the challenge. First of all, why would a film focus on Queen Elizabeth and Margaret Thatcher? Well, if women are really so oppressed as feminists claim, then why was one of the world's superpowers being ruled by two women? If women are oppressed, they would not have been in power. Feminists of course, will make the argument (much like people arguing racism) that women are secretly oppressed and don't have the same opportunities or make as much money as men; but there are plenty of men who don't have the same opportunities as other men or make as much money as other men, and that's because of skill sets and talents. Next, the Christmas carols, because the film takes place around Christmas, so is this random? No. The remote control ends up moving by itself into the leather chair that Bill died in, so we can say that Bill wants Janet to know that she's going to die, too (maybe Bill all ready knows Janet will die in the same chair he did) and instead of watching comedy shows, she should be worshiping God and singing His praises because she is going to die. The remote control ending up in Bill's chair is a note of awareness about the real "control" we have in our lives because all of us are going to end up like Bill: dead. We will then either go to heaven or hell, and how we spend each moment determines which of those places we will end up eternally. So, this is actually another way we can see Bill helping in the film, encouraging Janet not to see herself as a minority, and trying to get her to prepare for her own afterlife because of the events she has experienced (remember Maurice telling Lorraine about his daughter having just died and him wanting to know if there was a life hereafter; yes, there is).

Because God wills it that way.
Valak is subject to God's will, end of discussion, Valak has no will of his own, he can only do what God permits him to do (please recall the Book of Job when the devil has to go before God to ask permission to test Job). Why does having the name of Valak give her power? Because knowing this is the spirit of a seducer and defiler, she knows God is not punishing her for having married Ed; Lorraine marrying Ed was God's will because they are stronger together, and Valak knows that and has tried to pull them apart (for more on visions of Ed's death, please see caption below). This leads us to our last point.

This is a bit of a throw-back, but just to offer another point of validation regarding seeing Valak's nun disguise as a commentary on Lorraine's spiritual state, we saw the same done in The Conjuring (scene at the top). In this scene, the witch Bathsheba shows Lorraine how Lorraine's talent and skills has placed her "head and shoulders above" Ed because Ed isn't as gifted as Lorraine is. Once more, The Conjuring was a pro-socialist film that advocated everyone being equal, so for Lorraine to be so gifted and advanced spiritually was unacceptable to the pro-socialist agenda (for more, please see The Devil's Hour: The Conjuring and Demonic "Possessions").

Bullies.
When Ed first meets the Hodgson kids, he asks them about bullies, and Billy (the one who stutters) mentions that Janet always stuck up for them; Ed explains that this spirit is a bully and they have to stick up for Janet. Valak IS a bully, but when Johnny goes into the kitchen to stick up for Janet, Johnny doesn't fare well; why not? Because it's the guys who are really being bullied, and--just as we saw in X-Men: Apocalypse how Jean Grey had to defeat Apocalypse who had been unleashed by Moira MacTaggert, so, too, another woman--Lorraine Warren--must defeat the danger bullying Janet who unleashed it. Why? The demons of socialism. Billie and his stuttering is a metaphor of Ed, and even Bill Watkins' stuttering (his inability to say what he has to say in one sentence, he instead has to split up the sentence and tell Ed to cross the tapes) because these white men have been demonized through no fault of their own but forces dark and powerful (Valak) are trying to destroy people and using these men (Bill Watkins and Janet's ex-husband's adultery) to make women not want to be with men. Women without husbands is a driving point of socialism because the government wants to "be the husband" and run the household in place of the male (please remember the trailers for No Men Beyond This Point).

Peggy Hodgson tells Ed Warren that her ex-husband took all the music with him the day he left. Ed takes this to be a metaphor that the happiness left their lives when Mr. Hodgson left, but Peggy elaborates and tells him that, no, he really took all the music with him. Music is an important element of the whole film, from the first time the audience is taken to Enfield where the Hodgsons live, to the end of the film. Why? Given The Conjuring 2 is a horror film, we might expect sound effects and editing to be important from frights and scares, but this is all rock music, Christmas carols, children's rhymes and punk music we hear which one wouldn't really expect in a horror film. The first song is by The Clash, London Calling. but The Clash had had just released their first album that summer of 1977, The Clash, and London Calling wouldn't be recorded until the next year. Even though Elvis Presley died in August of 1977, Ed Warren sings his 1961 song,I Can't Help Falling In Love for the Hodgson family, and it's played again at the end of the film with Lorraine and Ed dancing. The song Bus Stop was originally released in 1966, ten years earlier than the film's events. The Bee Gees are also featured in the film with the song I Started a Joke from 1966 (in 1977, the Bee Gees soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever would become the greatest selling soundtrack of all time up to that point). So, my point is, these songs were chosen for specific reasons, not because they were the songs on the top of the charts at the time of the events. To begin with, all these musicians are white men. There are no songs by, for example, The Supremes, three black women, who had twelve number one hits and played their last concert in London that summer of 1977 before permanently disbanding forever. Why not have one of their songs in the film? Because the film isn't about them, it's about the white men who are being used as pawns, for a greater evil to take control over families. As mentioned, The Clash had released their first album this summer (1977) and the song White Riot, about class and wages, is on there, but it wasn't used in the film, because The Conjuring 2 isn't a "white riot," but it is about the contributions to our everyday lives and well-being that white male musicians have contributed to. At one point in the film, Margaret things there is a demon in a dark shadow on her wall, but the image she's making out in the darkness ends up being one of the male celebrity posters on her wall (maybe Glenn Campbell?). The point is, however, that the white male celebrity IS being targeted as the demon responsible for making the family miserable because that is what Valak wants to happen, and that's what the same socialists in the world today want to happen who are, again, using white men as their pawns. One last important note about Elvis in this film. There is another recent blockbuster film about battles (The Conjuring 2 is about spiritual battles, but this film is about real blood and destruction battles) when an Elvis song, The Devil In Disguise is playing during the battle scene: Godzilla. In Godzilla, Godzilla battles the MUTOs while in Las Vegas as The Devil In Disguise plays in the background. From my post: "You look like an angel, talk like an angel, but I got wise: you're the devil in disguise, lyrics from Elvis Presley. Recently, on The Bible mini-series, which was the most watched TV show in history, the character playing Satan caused a stir because of his close resemblance to Barack Obama; additionally, it makes sense that we would be thinking of Obama and Las Vegas, because between 2008 and 2012 alone (not including the last two years), Obama has made 10 trips to Vegas, including the day after the 9/11 Benghazi attacks because he wanted to do a fund raiser" (please see Erasure & Time: Godzilla (2014) and the Muto Identities for more). Men and women professing to love each other undermines Obama's recent attempts at spreading "the gay" but also in the Democrats general strategy of making people believe they are not people capable of love, but only animals who have needs and instincts. In the image above, Peggy obviously misses her husband, and in spite of what he did, she just misses him and wishes he was back. Again, this is something feminists and socialists would hate to see and hear.

I don't know what happened between The Conjuring and The Conjuring II, but this sequel is a complete turn-around from the first film. As always, there is more to the film than what I have time to analyze, so if you have found something I didn't cover, please, do not be discouraged, I'm sure you are right on your point: this is a huge narrative that covers a lot of complex ground, and they couldn't have done a better job. I can't wait for the next one.
Eat Your Art Out,
The Fine Art Diner

Here is Peggy holding the spirit board just before the furniture moves to block the doorway of Janet's bedroom. What is the significance of Janet having faked the attack in the kitchen (and the real life fake attacks done by the two sisters which make people think the whole thing was a fake)? Personal responsibility. She lied about what happened and so she has to take responsibility for it which almost leads to her death. But she also has to learn who she really is. Valak keeps having her possessed by Bill, i.e., turning Janet into a man. Towards the end, when Janet stands at the window and the glass shatters and cuts her face, that's a warning that her identity has been damaged: she's not a man, but without knowing herself, like Lorraine knowing that she is the wife of Ed, and Ed is the husband of Lorraine, and that's what God always intended, Janet would have a terrible life ahead of her, as do all who don't know God so they can come to know who they themselves are.

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This blog is dedicated to the glory of Jesus Christ.
Email thoughts and comments to thefineartdiner@gmail.com.
Please note: there is never just one correct interpretation, and I know that, I just rarely mention it nowadays; please do not think that, just because I have chosen to post one interpretation over another, doesn't mean that I think my interpretation is exclusively correct or other positions not possible. I would also like to point out that, we are living in a very defined, volatile culture with dynamic politics at play on the international stage and, whether you like to admit it or not, those elements go into the creation of art, which is why I include the political elements in my interpretations.
Thank you, have a nice day.